"URL shortener that pays you" and "AdFly alternative" are the same search. People want a short link, a slice of ad money, and a withdrawal that eventually shows up.
There are three products hiding under that sentence. Mixing them up is how you pick a bad one.
The three kinds
Brand shorteners (Bitly, Rebrandly, Dub). You pay them, or you stay on a free tier. They give you branded domains, click charts, UTM tools. They do not pay you per view. If you need yourbrand.co/sale, go there.
Paying shorteners (the AdFly family: ShrtFly, ShrinkMe, ouo, a long tail of clones). You shorten for free. Visitors hit a countdown and ads. You get a CPM that usually depends on country and device. Payouts are the product. Trust is the gamble.
KooLink. Same shape as the second group: short link, short interstitial, pay per valid view. Difference we will actually stand behind: one flat rate, published on the site, and bots do not count. Earnings are estimates until payouts go live.
We are not a Bitly clone. If you only wanted a pretty slug, you are in the wrong shop.
How the paying ones make money
The visitor does not pay you. An advertiser pays the shortener for the impression on the way through. You get a cut, quoted per 1,000 views.
That cut is only as good as:
- Whether the view is a person
- Whether the network still pays you next month
- Whether the destination survives YouTube / Telegram / Google Safe Browsing
Item 3 is on you. Paying shorteners get links banned in a lot of comment sections. If your community hates countdown pages, no CPM saves the post.
How to read a rate card
Ignore "up to $X / 1,000." That is the US-desktop row, or a bonus that expires.
Ask:
- Is the rate flat or a 40-country table?
- What is a view? Previews? Popunders? One IP, 50 hits?
- Minimum cashout, and which rails (PayPal, Wise, crypto, gift cards)
- How old is the last public "we paid" proof that is not a screenshot of their own admin
KooLink's published number is $3.50 / 1,000 valid views, every country, every device. The math is here. The 10,000 unique-view gate is here so empty accounts cannot apply. We will not pretend payouts are live if they are not.
AdFly, specifically
AdFly taught the internet this model. It also taught platforms to treat adf.ly links as junk. If you are leaving AdFly, you are usually leaving because payments stalled, rates collapsed, or the domain is already blocked where you post.
An "AdFly alternative" that only copies the countdown and the popunder will get you blocked in the same places. The useful alternative is: shorter wait, cleaner ads, a rate you can audit, and a view definition you can explain.
Who should not use a paying shortener
- People whose whole distribution is Instagram or a platform that strips unknown redirects
- People who need a custom domain more than they need $3.50 / 1k
- People with no traffic. There is nothing to monetize. A shortener will not invent an audience.
If you do have traffic and you already paste links, a paying shortener is a meter on work you are doing anyway. That is the only honest pitch.
If you try KooLink
Sign up, shorten the links you already share, watch the estimate. Apply after 10,000 valid views. If the numbers are wrong, say so.
We would rather lose you to Bitly than keep you with a fake toast.